Mormons, Jesus and the Church
Our next section is on the issue of Jesus Christ Establishing His Church. If you read any of the history and background of Mormonism, you will quickly find that positions, titles and offices are very important. I have a few issues with this. First of all, the core message of Jesus was not the establishment of a church but the coming of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom and the church are not the same thing. Hopefully the church is reflecting Kingdom values and is working to bring about the Kingdom (literally the reign of God), but the church is not the equivalent of the Kingdom of God.
The other problem that I have is that they claim that Jesus himself established all of these many offices of the church. The biblical basis for this is lacking. Jesus established disciples and apostles but that is it. The other offices were later developments as the church sought to become more organized as the church grew. These offices are not bad but it can hardly be said that they were established by Jesus.
I am also confused about the idea of Jesus establishing a priesthood. That is not what the New Testament says. There is no office of priests in the New Testament, established by Jesus or not. There are a few references to all believers as priests in the sense that we all have direct access to God and do not require a human mediator. The fact is that organizational authority is extremely important in Mormonism. To get to that strong and particular position, they must go beyond the New Testament understanding of the church.
